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COPYRIGHT 2008, Warren J. Deacon.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
For a copy of the complete script, email bijou
. Producers, agents and managers only, please.
Cast of Characters
MOBEY...................a
man in his late sixties.
LYLE...............a
boy of about l7, handsome.
GREG............30's,
thin, pale and unshaven.
MIRIAM......an
attractive woman in her 50's,
graceful, deep-voiced.
Photos: Odyssey Theatre production, Los Angeles.
The action of the play takes place on
the stage of The Bijou Theatre,
an old building which has been converted
into a pornographic
movie house.
The Time is the
present.
Act I
Scene l - Late
evening.
Scene 2 - Early
the next morning.
Scene 3 - Several
days later. Evening
Act II
Scene l - A
few minutes later.
Scene 2 - Several
days later. Late evening.
Scene 3 - Several
months later. Christmas Eve.
"Any group of people who love each other can be a family."
--Richard Marin
"All buildings are caves... and the theatre is the cave at its
best, the last arena in which all is always possible.
-- William Saroyan
THE SETTING
The stage housing of an ancient theatre.
The building was once an opulent palace housing films in the 50's and
60's, and legitimate theatre and vaudeville in earlier days. The set is
an archeological time capsule crowded with the discards of production and
activity: scenery flats, popcorn machine, stacks of empty soft drink bottles,
ushers uniforms, pipe racks of tattered costumes, old props and rusting
lights.
The audience is actually seated behind the stage, looking across it
and through the proscenium arch to face the imaginary movie audience. When
the lighting is right, we can see perhaps the first three rows of seating
in the movie house. When the screen is down, reversed images from the projector
play upon it and live action on the apron in front can be partially seen
through its opaqueness.
The stage is equipped for live production. The screen flies and there
is a complete fly gallery on one wall, wings, catwalks above, and light
pipes. The stage floor is slightly raked so that we can see the pairs of
footprints painted everywhere. When MOBEY turns on the overhead ultraviolet
lights, the footprints are accentuated.
The stage itself is mostly empty except for some scattered items, an
armchair, rug, lamp and phonograph which are clustered center stage as
though seeking companionship in this vast, empty space. There is a large
trunk and cupboards under the stairs. A single bed, sink, stove, refrigerator
and shelves line one wall.
Railed metal stairs lead up from the dressing rooms below to an elevated
landing containing a pay telephone, a door to the roof and fire escape,
and a lighting control booth enclosed by a wire cage. From the landing,
a metal ladder continues up the wall and disappears into the darkness above.
Above the landing is a skylight which can be opened and closed with a rope
on the fly rail.
The design should incorporate whatever equipment or architecture that
exists in the actual theatre where the
play is to be performed, including raw walls if possible.
ACT I, Scene l.
Late Evening.
A film is in progress. The light
from the projector filters through
the screen and onto the stage,
revealing MOBEY seated in the
armchair.
The images on the screen are too
close to make visual sense, but the
sound is extremely loud. The bodies
of a man and woman roll around:
flashes of faces, limbs, hair,
genitalia.
MALE
(screams)
Please, Linda--more!
More!
FEMALE
Alright, Robert,
I'm trying!
MALE
More, more!!
FEMALE
You really want
it, don't you baby. So much, so much!
MOBEY turns to look at the screen.
MALE
More!
FEMALE
Oooh!!!
More and more and more and more!
MALE
(a long scream)
Jesus, Linda--
FEMALE
Yes, Robert,
I know.
With a cry of rage, MOBEY rushes at
the screen and waves at the images.
Then he returns to the chair.
MALE
This is the
best, Linda. Really, the best it's ever been.
FEMALE
I know.
For me too.
MALE
As long as I
live, I want it this way. Always this way. I've
wanted it so
long.
FEMALE
Yes, Robert.
Yes.
MUSIC fades up under the dialogue.
MALE
I've always
wanted someone -- someone who could take --
charge!
Could find it within themselves to --
(a long animal
scream)
FEMALE
Oh, baby--
MALE
--to control
this -- to control ME!!! -- in this lifetime of
--
Another shriek. The music
concludes and the letters 'The End'
appear in reverse on the screen.
The projector goes dark and
multi-colored footlights fade up on
the other side.
MOBEY turns slightly in his chair.
MOBEY
(quietly)
Go home. Go
on. Take your filth with you in your picture
heads.
We don't want you here.
He walks to the wings and drags out
a worklight: a single bulb on a
stand, protected by a wire cover.
He places it left of center and
turns it on. The light throws a
flat wash over the stage area,
creating long, grotesque shadows on
the screen.
The additional light shows MOBEY to
be quite old. His hands shake a bit
and his breathing is unsteady. Yet,
when he walks, there is a grace
which is inconsistent with his age.
He still has all of his hair which
stands out in great white stalks
about his small face. He wears
faded coveralls with the insignia
of the Bijou Theatre on the back.
The light reveals something else,
too. Scattered about the stage are
pairs of painted footprints.
MOBEY walks to the hotplate, right
and puts on the kettle.
In a moment, the voice of GREG is
heard far away behind the screen.
GREG (off)
Night, Mobey.
MOBEY
Goodnight.
GREG (off)
I'll lock up
front. Don't forget garbage day in the morning.
MOBEY
Garbage in the
night.
GREG (off)
What?
MOBEY
Thank you. I'll
remember.
GREG (off)
The men's john
is plugged up again.
MOBEY
(mumbling)
Thank you. I'll
fix it.
GREG (off)
What?
MOBEY
I said, thank
you, I'll fix it right up.
MOBEY makes tea. GREG's shadow
appears on the screen. But he does
not come on to the stage.
GREG
Did you watch
tonight?
MOBEY
No.
GREG
That girl was
good. Big knockers. You a tit man or an ass
man, Mobey?
MOBEY
I beg your pardon?
GREG
Boy he really
gave it to her. Whoo-ee! Did you see the size
of the dildoe?
MOBEY
What?
GREG
The dil --
MOBEY
What?
GREG
Doe.
MOBEY
Oh. Pause. No.
GREG
Oh.
MOBEY
(to himself)
Pause. I feel
as though I'm trapped in a Pinter play.
GREG
Not many in
tonight. Been falling off lately. Larry denies
it, but I know
he's thinking about bringing in them fag
movies.
MOBEY gathers papers around him and
sits at the typewriter.
MOBEY
Stag? Pause.
GREG
Fag.
MOBEY
Pause.
GREG
I guess I don't
care. Hell, it's a living. All those guys
sitting down
at the union hall, waiting around for
legitimate jobs.
Hell, I said, you guys are waiting for the
god damn "Sound
of Music" to come back. "Legitimate."
That's such
a snobby word, you know?
MOBEY
Not always.
What?
MOBEY
Legitimate.
It wasn't always snobby.
GREG
What? Live theatre?
MOBEY
With live actors.
GREG
(giggles)
They got 'em
live now, Mobey. Live sex acts, right on the
stage.
Ralph, down at the Kit Kat Club? He works those
shows. Something
-- whee!!! -- must be something. I said,
"hell, Ralph,
how many shows can you expect a guy to do in
one night!"
He laughs raucously at his joke.
GREG
I don't know.
Pig flicks, live sex acts. You wonder where
it's all going
to go, you know? Hell they got 'em in so many
shapes and flavors
nowadays, you just wouldn't believe it:
guys and girls,
guys and guys, girls and girls, topsy,
turvey, vicey,
versey. Hell, they got 'em with little kids
in 'em, even.
There's this one where this broad -- Jeez, a
fifty year old
broad grabs this little kid in the park.
Picks him right
off the teeter-totter, yanks down his little
baby white jockey
shorts and goes right to it. Whee-oo!
MOBEY starts to type.
GREG
But he was just
a kid, you know. Before the age, so he
couldn't do
it too good, you know? So she drops him like a
hot potato and
goes and gets a coke bottle instead. Sooner
or later that's
what they all do -- they all get coke
bottles or bananas
or zucchinis or something. You working on
your play again?
MOBEY
Yes.
GREG
I thought you
gave it up.
MOBEY
I did.
GREG
You been working
on that thing since I came here.
MOBEY
On and off.
GREG
You think it'll
get put on this time?
MOBEY
Perhaps. If
it's ever finished.
GREG finally steps around the
screen and onto the stage.
GREG
Our paychecks
are going to be late again.
Steps into some footprints.
GREG
Close your eyes.
MOBEY does.
GREG
Who am I?
MOBEY
John Barrymore.
GREG
You never miss,
do you?
Looks down at the footprints.
GREG
Small feet.
MOBEY
But a great
artist.
GREG
When I was on
the coast, I saw Brandon de Wilde's footprints
at Grauman's
Chinese theatre. He had small feet, too.
Brandon's dead
now. This guy, too?
MOBEY
In the physical
sense.
GREG
Hey, dead's
dead, right?
MOBEY
They live on
in the memory.
GREG
Whose memory?
I never heard of John Barrymore.
MOBEY
His reputation
remains secure, nonetheless.
GREG
Maybe we ought
to bring in live sex.
MOBEY
I wonder. What
kind of person do you suppose comes to sit in
the dark and
watch others perform sex acts?
GREG
Simulated sex
acts.
MOBEY
The distinction
eludes me.
GREG
In this state,
as long as it's simulated, it's considered
theatre. From
a legal standpoint.
MOBEY
It's not theatre
from any standpoint. Sacrilege and
desecration,
pure and simple.
GREG
Ralph says they've
tripled their gate at the Kit Kat.
MOBEY
The Kit Kat
is a tawdry, third-rate movie house. Always has
been.
The Bijou is a legitimate theatre.
GREG
Was legitimate,
Mobey, a long, long time ago. People want
more.
You either move, or you stand still.
MOBEY
Or die. You
don't appreciate the history that's everywhere
on these boards!
Barrymore played here, Ellen Terry, Otis
skinner.
They cry out in shame!
GREG listens for a moment.
GREG
I don't hear
anything. Anyway, you have to look at the
bright side.
Would you rather they tear it down for a
parking lot,
like the Majestic? At least your old dead
friends here
won't be buried under eight feet of concrete.
MOBEY
That might be
preferable. It won't matter much, in any case.
MOBEY continues to type for a
moment.
GREG
Well, I gotta
go. Don't forget the toilet. Goodnight.
MOBEY
Goodnight.
GREG leaves. In a moment, the
footlights go out and a door slams
shut behind the screen. MOBEY
stops typing and looks around. Goes
back to the trunk, gets out a tape
recorder, turns it on.
MOBEY
Testing, testing.
Takes out the batteries, gets new
ones from his work table, puts them
in, turns it on.
MOBEY
Notes on the
Play. It's been some time since I've recorded
any observations
here. I sweep among the seats and wonder
where the Arts
are going. Where once I found Hershey bar
wrappers and
Orange Crush bottles, there are now only
condoms and
crushed out marijuana cigarettes, underwear --
men's and women's--
and other unmentionables. Civilization,
shedding itself,
like a snake in the darkness.
The kettle boils. He turns off the
recorder, makes a cup of tea. Goes
to the light booth and throws a
switch. The stage is bathed in an
eerie, violet light. Pairs of
footprints appear everywhere. He
comes down, wanders among them. He
stops in a set, drinks his tea.
MOBEY
"Tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty
pace from day
to day."
Bends down, dusts off the
footprints with his hanky.
MOBEY
Did you think
I'd forgotten you, Leslie? I hope you remember
me.
Gets a huge book of clippings out
of the trunk, pages through it.
Nineteen seventeen.
I thought so. I played one of Macduff's
babes. You gave
me a peppermint candy every night before
curtain.
All sticky and covered with little bits of your
tobacco. Oh,
you were magnificent! I was -- eight? And an
excellent judge
of classic acting.
I watched each
performance, copied your every move. One
evening you
were ill. I brought your tea. I said, "Don't
worry, Mr. Towner,
I'll go on for you. I can do it just like
you."
You smiled and kissed me and said, "No, Richard, a
young boy would
never survive the darkness of Macbeth's
soul. You must
wait until you are older."
Peers out through the screen.
MOBEY
I'm much older
now, Leslie. I live entirely in darkness. It
surrounds me.
My darkness is the darkness of shadows, not
souls.
Images on a screen. Shadow images from an electric
shadow box.
Flashing, twisting, turning. Gone the moment
the plug is
pulled.
Speaks into the recorder.
MOBEY
Are the ends
of the film spliced together? Is Time moving
backward down
a circular staircase, carrying a flashlight?
What happens
when the batteries run down? Electric decay,
painted women
luring the farm boys, not even real. Electric
reflection,
shadow decay, flesh atoms.
Rewinds the recorder.
MOBEY's VOICE
(on tape)
"...carrying
a flashlight? What happens when the batteries
run down? Electric
decay, painted women luring the farm boy,
not even real.
Electric reflection, shadow decay, flesh
atoms."
Switches into record and speaks
into the mike.
MOBEY
Notes. I have
remained in this place, even though I detest
what goes on
here. I remain in my body: do I therefore
detest what
I've become? Unresolved. Inconclusive. Vague,
but promising.
MOBEY drags the trunk out from
under the stairs, opens it. He
begins pulling out things: props,
bits of costumes, leather-bound
scripts. Each has a special
meaning: he puts a hat on his head,
or holds a sceptre, even reads bits
of Shakespeare or Wilde from the
scripts.
The clock begins to strike. He runs
to it, stops the pendulum.
He turns on the radio. Classical
music is heard. He sits. Then his
feet begin to move.
MOBEY
Touch the stage,
ever so lightly, dust the floor softly,
like the first
snow, the ball of the foot just barely
grazing the
surface. No sound, really. Just the slightest
brush and crackle.
Brush and crackle.
The music stops and the voice of
the radio announcer is heard.
ANNOUNCER
This concludes
another day of broadcasting for radio station
WTRT. WTRT is
owned and operated by the Fine Arts
Broadcasting
Company with studios and offices located in the
Meridian Plaza
Center.
MOBEY
I should have
been a dancer, Leslie.
ANNOUNCER
WTRT operates
on an assigned carrier frequency of 840
kilohertz with
an effective radiated power of ten thousand
watts, by authority
of the Federal Communications
Commission,
Washington, D.C. Some of the programs on WTRT
have been pre-recorded.
MOBEY
(into the mike)
Most of my life
has been pre-recorded.
ANNOUNCER
Now, until we
resume our broadcast schedule at 6 a.m., this
is Paul Clive
wishing you a very pleasant good night and
good morning.
Ladies and gentlemen, our National Anthem.
MOBEY
Good night,
Mr. Clive.
The anthem, played robustly by a
military band, blares through the
theatre. MOBEY stands with his hand
on his heart.
The station goes off the air
leaving only static, loud and
irritating.
MOBEY
Notes on the
Play.
Holds up the microphone, waves it
around, as though capturing the
static.
MOBEY
I don't know
if you can hear this. It's the sound of
nothing.
The cosmos without words. Atoms falling apart.
Destruction.
Disintegration. Electric reflection, shadow
decay, flesh
atoms. The darkness descends.
He clicks off the radio and ascends
to a pay telephone on the landing
of the stairs. He inserts a dime
and dials.
MOBEY
(with great flair)
Yes, would you
ring Miss Potter's room, please. What? This
is Mr. Burbage
calling. Mr. Richard Burbage. I beg your
pardon?
(indignant)
Just ring room
l09, please! Ah, good day, Miss Potter. How
are we this
morning? It's Richard, of course. Yes! Well, I
called to see
if we might get together to discuss the play.
What? No, it
is not finished, but we could begin working on
it, discussing
some of the scenes --
MOBEY seems distracted.
MOBEY
I see. Well,
I'm sorry you won't --
He has apparently been cut off.
MOBEY
(suddenly)
Miriam!
Miriam, please. I -- I'd like you to come -- just
for a visit,
Miriam.
Pressing the receiver close to his
mouth.
MOBEY
I love
you, Miriam.
He is deeply shaken. He hangs up
the phone. He goes to the trunk,
digs around. A tinkle of glass. He
takes out a photograph of a woman
in a silver frame. The glass is
shattered. Pieces of it crunch
under his feet.
MOBEY
(sings)
"And will a'
not come again? And will a' not come again? No,
no, he is dead;
Go to thy death-bed; He never will come
again. How should
I your true love know, From another one?"
He turns off the radio, knocks the
remaining glass from the photograph
into a trash can.
MOBEY
"There's a rosemary.
That's for remembrance -- pray you
love, remember?"
You were as fair an Ophelia as I've ever
seen, Miriam.
Goes to the trunk, gets out a teddy
bear.
MOBEY
I kept this
old thing. I dream about Will Richard all the
time now. When
he was teething, he almost chewed its ear
off, remember?
And that song about the bears. He listened to
it over and
over again on that little phonograph we gave
him. Then he'd
sing it.
(sings)
"The little
teddy bears are having a wonderful time today.
See them catch
their underwear." He thought it was
"underwear"
-- for the longest time. It was "unaware." But
he always sang
"underwear," even when he learned the right
word. You said
I taught him how to dance as soon as he could
walk. That wasn't
true, of course. How could it be?
He winds the phonograph, puts on a
scratchy record.
MOBEY
No sound, really.
Remember? Just the slightest brush and
crackle.
Brush and crackle.
He begins to dance the soft shoe
again, holding the bear.
MOBEY
The hands follow
the feet, a beat or two behind,
simultaneous
time, actually. You see the feet, and then the
hands. You see
the past and the future together in a flash.
There is no
chronology, no straight line of history to
follow. Then
and now, now and then. And the head, cocked
slightly to
the side, listening for wind. A bird on a black
branch, searching
the silence for a berry or a crust of
bread. Will
the music end? Not if the feet continue. You
dance as though
at any moment you could fly. And once you
leave the ground,
you never need to dance.
Dances for a moment. The record
ends, begins clicking in its
groove. He places the teddy bear
carefully on the chair next to the
photo.
MOBEY
I really should
have been a dancer.
Turns on the recorder, speaks into
the mike.
MOBEY
Final note.
Believe me, it was difficult to choose something
on an occasion
such as this. Oh, I knew it would be William
Shakespeare,
of course. There was never any doubt about
that.
Speaks to the 'Towner' footprints.
MOBEY
(slowly)
So, Leslie,
this is for you. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow Creeps
in this petty pace from day to day To the
last syllable
of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have
lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief
candle! Life's
but a walking shadow, a poor player That
struts and frets
his hour upon the stage And then is heard
no more. It
is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, Signifying
nothing."
A long pause. He turns off the
recorder, puts it next to the photo
and the bear, looks around the
stage. Then he gets a gun out of
the trunk, comes back.
MOBEY
Leslie. Will
Richard. Miriam. I love you all. But I can't
stay in the
darkness.
Steps through the masking. We can
see him dimly through the screen.
He faces the movie house and puts
the gun to his head.
He hesitates. The record clicks in
its groove.
Takes a long breath. Presses the
gun hard to his temple. A beat. He
squeezes the trigger slowly. The
gun clicks harmlessly.
For a moment, he's stunned. Then he
begins to laugh very darkly.
MOBEY
The triumph
of mediocrity. Couldn't even remember to load
the gun for
God's sake!
He throws the gun down and wanders
to the bed. He climbs in and turns
to the wall, pulls the covers over
him.
Silence, except for the record
clicking.
A door opens, off. The sound of
traffic. The door closes.
In a moment, a shadow moves across
the screen. LYLE steps through the
masking and onto the stage. He
stands watching the figure on the
bed.
Then he takes off his back pack,
tiptoes over and lifts the needle
from the record. He goes to the
clock starts the pendulum. The
clock begins to tick.
THE LIGHTS FADE.
END SAMPLE
For a copy of the complete script, email bijou
. Producers, agents and managers only, please.
warren
john deacon BIOGRAPHY
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